Beginning of Wisdom

Leon R. Kass, MD, is the Addie Clark Harding Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the College at the University of Chicago and Hertog Fellow in Social Thought at the American Enterprise Institute. A member of the President's Council on Bioethics, he is the author or coauthor of five books, including, most recently, Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics.

"A learned and fluent, delightfully overstuffed stroll through the Gates of Eden.... Mix Harold Bloom with Stephen Jay Gould and you'll get something like Kass. A wonderfully intelligent reading of Genesis." - Kirkus Reviews, starred review "Throughout his book, Kass uses fruitful, fascinating techniques for getting at the heart of Genesis.... Innumerable times [he] makes a reader sit back and rethink what has previously been tediously familiar or baffling." - Washington Post "Extraordinary.... Its analyses and hypotheses will leave no reader's understanding of Genesis unchanged." - New York Times "It is important to state that this is a book not merely rich, but prodigiously rich with insight. Kass is a marvelous reader, sensitive and careful. His interpretations surprise again and again with their cogency and poignancy." - Jerusalem Post"